


After the Bench

by ANonsense



Category: Alex Rider - Anthony Horowitz
Genre: Gen, Nostalgia, Prison, Russia, Sad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-30
Updated: 2016-01-30
Packaged: 2018-07-24 10:08:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 744
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7504276
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ANonsense/pseuds/ANonsense
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's funny how often coincidences happen. Here, on this prison bench, in the middle of Russia, six boys sit. Or, at least, they once sat. They're dead now, in any case...</p>
            </blockquote>





	After the Bench

In the room, there are six people: two of them are drunk, three of them are thieves, one of them is not meant to be there. One of them should be in school: he is six years old. He is drunk out of his mind on vodka and can barely stand. This is Yassen Gregorovich. He is Russian, and a contract killer, but he doesn't know that yet.

  
A second, his best friend, Leo, is exactly the same age. He shouldn't be in school: he has been suspended, because he is a thief. He has ended up here, on a bench with his best friend, because money is not something that you can take from churches without being held accountable, even if you are not yet four feet tall.

  
A third child, Dima, is called so because Dimitry is too long to say. He is also a thief. He is nine. He has stolen a name and an identity, because he had not had one of his own. Another thief is Roman, his friend. He is almost the same age, but not quite. Actually, he doesn't know his own birthday. They haven't met their third group member yet, because his mother is not dead and he hasn't run away from home.

  
Another boy: John Rider. Drunk and disorderly. He is seventeen and is only on this bench because the other bench is full. Why is he in Russia? Because his parents wanted a holiday, and he wanted to learn Russian before he went to university. His brother, Ian, is not meant to be there. He is ten, and very bored. His brother was meant to have been looking after him tonight, when their parents went out.

  
It is ironic, this bench: a police bench in Rosna. For Leo and Yasha, it is five miles from home, and their parents will need to walk here to pick them up. Yasha shouldn't have been truanting in the first place. Dima and Roman are orphans; their parents are not here, and therefore they are on their own. Trains out of Rosna are few and far between, but Dima is planning on heading to Moscow. It is big, and you can get lost there. This is a plus as far as he is concerned. When he goes, Roman will follow. It has already happened.  
John can go home on his own, when he can think straight. If he is let out any sooner than he is sober, he is likely to be trampled to death in the dark. Cars aren't common in rural Russia, but horses are. Horses don't have lights.

  
Ian is just bored. He can't even talk to the other boys, because they're not allowed to talk.

  
Yasha is dying for a drink. The alcohol has given him a headache. When he is older and dying - thirty years later - he will not remember this moment at all. It will seem insignificant. He does not know the boy sat to the right of him will be at the end of a bullet he sh

oots, or that the boy a seat further will have taught him how to put it there. All he knows is that, on his left, Leo is making farting noises with his arm, and it is hysterical.  
Dima does not care about sitting on this bench: it is out of the dark, after all. Children are always cold in Russia. It is how the world works. Soon, he will start taking crack cocaine to counteract the cold. It won't work, because it will kill him. He will be twenty-one, the same age at which Yasha will have shot twenty-eight people.

  
Roman will die of liver failure in his forties. It will be slow and painful, but he will consider it a decent way to go, because, when he is looking up at the only light in the flat; lying on a dirty mattress and struggling to breathe, he will enjoy the fact he can afford it all. Legally-gotten alcohol is as much a status symbol as it is a murderer.

  
Ian will die before he is old enough to have children. John will die first, though: it is right that older siblings should go before younger ones. Parents should go before their children, as well, but this will not happen in their case. This will not happen twice.

  
Alex Rider does not know of this bench. No-one will be alive to tell him.


End file.
